


dum spiro, spero

by flustraaa



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Criminal Minds RPF
Genre: Alex Blake deserves nice things, Gen, Hurt Spencer Reid, Injured Spencer Reid, Sad Spencer Reid, Sleepy Spencer Reid, Spencer Reid Whump, Spencer Reid deserves nice things, character introspection, kinda hits me in the ouchies tbh, uwu ig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:28:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26458717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flustraaa/pseuds/flustraaa
Summary: “it’s like drowning, i guess,” she shrugs, wiping a tear from her crimson tinted cheeks, “you don’t really realise how it feels to breathe until it’s been taken away.”“that’s the thing though, isn’t it?” he queries easily, eyes locked on the wall before him, “while you breathe, you hope.”
Relationships: Alex Blake & Penelope Garcia, Alex Blake & Spencer Reid, Alex Blake/James Blake, Spencer Reid & Penelope Garcia
Comments: 16
Kudos: 96





	dum spiro, spero

There have been very few times within Alex Blake’s life in which’s shes felt helpless; times where she’s felt like she has needed to pray and even fewer times in which her prayers had been answered.

It’s times like this, as she scrubs the blood free from her hands that she wonders if the world is godless, or if he has simply abandoned her.

As she watches the tacky crimson run down her fingers, becoming smooth with the cool hospital water she begins to ponder why exactly this is one of those times.

_Out, out! Damned spot!_  


It’s an acrid and useless submission, but it’s supplied by her conscience, no less. 

There have been three moments definitively that have made her feel like this, and one where she’d felt the consistent thudding of her heart hammering away at her chest— the way the hair slipping into her eyes had made her feel the way she had before this moment right here.

The first was during the during the Amerithrax case, and it hardly compares. She’d lost her job, she’d been scared but she’d been determined. If Alex blake knows anything, she knows that she could get out of anything unscathed—

But that’s the problem isn’t it? To get to the top she has to stumble over heads and other broken bones, she has to walk a tightrope wound like floss between the teeth of those she’d knocked down.

The second time, she listens carefully as her baby boy takes his last breath. He’s wedged himself between her body and James’, suffering in silence.

His grips loosens, she begs him to stay. James looks away as tears begin to glisten along his life, threatening to spill over the dam he’d been crafting for as long as their dearest boy had been fighting.

He tells them he _loves_ them;

he tells them he’s _sorry_. 

It never makes it any easier. James’ careful fingers stumble over the raven zipper of her dress, and he as she clasps the buckle of his shoe she watches his lips begin to form Ethan’s name.

He falters before a sound ever leaves his lips.

His eyes close, and he lets out a sigh that’s so heavy she fears it may crack the foundation of their home.

She prays, and she places a lily upon a coffin that’s all too small. She is not placated, and part of her fears that, perhaps, turmoil will be the only consistent for the rest of her days. 

They drink wine, and drown their sorrows. They promise that nothing will change, they grip tighter and watch as the ship enters the murky waters before clearer skies.

She finds hope in the silence, but she finds reverence and revival in the soft sounds that fill the empty space.

Until now, as she listens to exhausted breathes and the monotonous beeping of the monitor connected to the young man who had taken a bullet for her.

When her vision blurs with tears, she sees her son fighting for his life— she sees her Ethan, he enduring boy fighting his way back to her after his departure.

She can hear the soft clatter of plastic airplanes wheels against wooden tables, and the frail whooshes of air as he’d looked her in the eyes. 

“ _Mommy,” he had whispered, squeezing as with as much strength as he can muster as she brushes the russet strands of hair from her eyes, “I’m gonna be okay. I promise.”_

She’d almost believed him. Almost.

And after an eternal night, his eyebrows crinkle— and the boy she’d lost comes home. 

Penelope gasps, and her heels clip against the beige linoleum floor as she takes clipped steps to reid.

He groans, his head lulls— and as he catches his breath, she loses hers at once. She takes his balled fist before she can stop herself, and something deep within her shatters at the words that leave his dry lips.

“ _Mom_?” His eyes are still closed; a beat passes, then two. She waits, she hopes— and she prays. 

Her eyes focus on her hands, the blood is gone and so is the air in the room. She is Lady Macbeth, and this may just be her downfall. 

“Are you with us, Spencer?” His eyelids flutter, delicate lashes casting deep shadows along his cheekbones as his head burrows into the pillow, “can you hear me?” 

He draws in a breath, amber and gold peeking through, a mumble of a response tumbling from his lips— the incoherent state of repose threatening to swallow him. 

His eyes open, he smiles—

And for the first time in years, Alex breathes. 

Penelope disappears, and she’s left with Spencer. He’s exhausted, desperately trying to cling to consciousness— and she’s almost certain it’s for his own benefit. 

She can almost hear the question threatening to break free from his lips, and somewhere deep within her she knows what it is. 

But as she holds his hand, and brushes the hair from his eyes, she realises that this is not Ethan. 

And no one ever will _be_. 

As he bites back his question, she never dares speak hers:  
Why would a young man, with so much good to do in the world, take a bullet for her?

On the flight home, after everyone has drifted off and the prying eyes have left her to her own thoughts, the word of her puzzle come together and only sex letters fill her head.

_Move on._

Her eyes find his, her back pressed snuggly against the edge of the kitchen nook as she sips on a mug of chamomile.

He sends her a half smile, which she tries to return, as her eyes inquire words she can’t quite figure out how to speak.

“I’m okay,” he answers, stifling a yawn as his fingers fidget with the soft cotton beneath his head, “a little cold, but okay.”

She doesn’t say a word, popping the cap off of a water bottle and shoving a purple straw in the top. 

He moves to sit, but she holds it to him instead. Her heart hurts just a bit more when he thanks her after draining the bottle, finally forcing himself up to use the restroom.

Spencer returns to find Blake waiting, she pulls the blankets back over his body as he settles back into the couch. 

And his chest aches a little as he realises, maybe he’s not just letting her take care of him to feel better— maybe, there’s a part of him that wishes he wasn’t so alone his whole life.

He drifts off, dreaming of his mother making him chicken noodle soup instead of leaving him in the dark while he shivered desperately on the brink of death. 

Blake watches his lips quirk and fall, and before she knows it— she dreams of what she’s loved and lost.

It’s different this time, she thinks, even as his eyes bore into hers with a painful degree of innocence. She hopes he doesn’t hear the thickness as she swallows down the words hat threaten to spill from her lips.

He tells her Ethan is a great name, she tells him information— and she supposes that maybe they’re not so different after all. 

She knows the exact moment he realises what comes next, and despite knowing the ins and outs of human behaviour— she doesn’t know what to say.

Instead, she turns her back on him— and it’s then that she knows he’s not her Ethan after all.

“Goodbye, Alex,” he calls, and she swallows sobs as she forces a smile on her lips.

She never breaks, she only breathes.

And while she breathes, for the first time, she hopes. 


End file.
